This blog is sponsored content by Shire Leasing.
60% of SMEs have plans to reduce their carbon footprint (Source: SME Climate Hub Survey).
This is good news for the environment and for the economy, however;
35% of SME’s said that cost was the most significant barrier preventing action on net zero initiatives, with 21% citing upfront costs being the biggest component of this (Source: British Business Bank).
This is where Shire Leasing can help. Our Green Asset Vendor Finance programme is designed to allow manufacturers, distributors and installers of green assets, to include solar and battery storage, to offer business customers an alternative to cash at point of sale. Our objective is to enable your customers to access your products more affordably, aligning the cost of acquisition with the economic and environmental benefits that your solutions deliver. By spreading the cost over terms of up to 7 years, the cost of acquisition can be aligned with predicted energy savings without impacting cash reserves.
What finance options are available to SMEs investing in sustainability?
We provide finance and hire purchase options for business customers that can help you to overcome budgetary objections and maximise your B2B sales conversions. Through our experience of your market, we have also developed unique product offerings to support UK SMEs invest in projects more affordably:
Low Start for Low Emissions – This option is designed for customers who want to make the transition into greener assets and improve their environmental impact, where the alignment of predicted savings with cost may be a hurdle. Through this solution, projects can be installed and deliver the benefits to the customer for as little as £100p/m for up to six months, before full rental repayments begin. It’s a great way to facilitate the sale without affecting the cash flow of the customer or your own business, especially heading into solar installations in the autumn and winter months which might otherwise stall projects.
Green HP Balloon – This option allows businesses to invest in green assets and projects through a Hire Purchase agreement, where customers can spread costs up to 7 years with an option to own the asset at the end of the agreement. The balloon payment at the end of the term helps to reduce the regular payments throughout the agreement term by deferring up to 30% of the solution cost. Customers can transition to greener assets and reduce their carbon footprints sooner, by avoiding initial cost hurdles and spreading costs, realising predicted energy/cost savings immediately whilst giving them time to budget and save for the final balloon payment.
Why Partner with Shire Leasing
At Shire Leasing, we believe that every business has a role to play in reducing their environmental impact and we are committed to continual improvements in our own business as well as our customers. In 2022, we won an industry award for ‘Supporting Customer ESG Goals’, a testament to some of our work including upskilling members of our team with Carbon Literacy training, planting over 20,000 trees through our ‘Tree for every new Lease’ initiative and taking opportunities to share knowledge with new and existing customers.
As well as introducing changes within our own business, we have been leading the way with innovative solutions to solve new and emerging environmental challenges such as our Clear Air Zone financial support scheme frameworks through our Driving Clean Air programme. We have already administered in excess of £6 million of financial assistance on behalf of Local Authorities contributing to the upgrade of over 1000 non-compliant vehicles and enabled UK businesses to affordably invest in £26m worth of zero or lower emission vehicles through our schemes in Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, Sheffield and Newcastle and Gateshead.
Joining Shire Leasing’s Green Asset Vendor Finance programme
Committed to environmental improvement, Shire Leasing are well-positioned to financially support UK SMEs in their journey to become greener, achieve sustainability goals and invest in your assets affordably.
We don’t expect you to be experts in finance, that’s our job and we have been delivering business finance solutions since 1990. Our Green Asset Vendor Finance team will take the time to understand your business model, solutions and customer base to devise a commercial build tailored for your business. Once onboarded, our dedicated support desk remain on hand to support you and your customers with quotes and enquiries, to make financing your green asset projects as easy as possible.
Offering you speed and autonomy, we also provide vendors access to our Shire Online portal with the ability for you to produce customer quotations, generate immediate automated finance decisions for customers and send documentation for e-signatory to complete finance sales within minutes. To maximise acceptances, where deals are not auto-accepted, our team of in-house underwriters go on to review and return manual decisions in less than 2 hours on average, allowing you and your customers to continue with growth plans without delay.
Offering finance options with Shire Leasing comes at no cost to your business either. Upon installation and completion of all relevant documentation, your invoice is paid in full within 24 hours and your customer’s agreement with us begins.
Our proposition can result in increased B2B sales conversions and enable SMEs to affordably invest in new technologies, drive positive change and achieve sustainability goals without damaging cash flow.
To explore Shire Leasing’s Green Asset Vendor Finance proposition and learn more about offering your customers finance options, simply get in touch by emailing greenassetfinance@shireleasing.co.uk, or visit https://shireleasing.co.uk/greenassetvendor/.
[1] https://smeclimatehub.org/new-survey-reveals-small-business-barriers-climate-action/
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